Climate Resilience / Disaster Risk Management

     It is widely agreed upon that rising global temperature will lead to increased intensity and frequency of a variety of natural disasters around the world. One of the conferences at the TAP Pavilion covered Disaster Risk Management in Asian Cities. They focused on Asian cities because there is a fast pace of urbanization/carbonization occurring in the region and therefor there is a real need to strengthen city protection and resilience against natural disasters.
     The introducer of the panel of experts on this topic was Tadashi Matsumoto, Director of Regional Development Policy for the Organization for Co-operation and Development (OECD). The moderator of the panel of experts was Rolf Alter, The Director of Public Governance and Territorial Development Directorate at OECD. OECD has a large focus on markets and cities and therefor is highly involved with urbanized planning for cities that are commonly hit with environmental disasters. The talks focused around cities in Indonesia, Korea, Japan and even in central Brazil.

     In these areas some climate risks cities are facing include, but are not limited to; inflow of people which most governments don't have the capacity to manage, water implications such as clean water and sanitation, flash flooding, uncontrolled or unregulated development which leads to things like house fires, air pollution in cities surrounded by certain topography such as mountains, public health issues such as the spread of diseases, the brining of peat lands and deforestation which lead to environmental degradation. Organizations like the UNISDR and the DRR  & CR help governments on a variety of scales work together to combat such issues.
     Some of the action steps or projects that are currently taking place show the constant need for improvement of the environmental resilience and living areas of cities. Many cities have plenty of studies on the effects that natural disasters have, but now is the time for the studies to turn into actions. Governments need improved disaster risk mechanisms (central command stations for communication and planning). There is also a need for more alert systems and better means of communication. Many cities in these areas need civil defense organizations in each city in the form of initial response team, an area that I see potential for militaries/militias. As of now, the US military is filling as role as a global first responder to areas devastated by natural disaster around the world, such as the Haitian earthquake.